It had all the makings of a disastrous week, with me being responsible for on-site logistics and all the miscellaneous details involved with having 85 people at a hotel at the beach for a five-day retreat, where any of their problems were suddenly my problems. Depending on what happens, this kind of thing may be my job for the next two years, coordinating trips and staying on top of church partner relations, so it is a good thing that after this week, not only is the hotel still standing, but we sustained no human casualties (that is, none that I happened to notice).

Keeping the ship sailing this week, so to speak, has not been as daunting a task as I had thought. Sure you have to double check the price on every room, meal and miscellaneous detail against the prices they had originally quoted, but that’s all just part of Cambodia. I had to be forceful at first, letting them know I was no sucker without a backbone, vulnerable to their schemes, but after a while they stop pushing so hard and they actually seem to respect you a little bit. So then I try to be friendly and polite even while demanding double-A batteries for the third time, saying “we absolutely need them in ten minutes,” implying by the look in my eyes and the shaking of my fist, “or calamity will surely come upon us all!” Just kidding, it didn’t quite get to that. But close.

It wasn’t all details and logistics and headaches though, fortunately. For starters, the Operation Mobilisation ship Doulos was in port, making its first ever stop in Cambodia. We toured the place, bought some cheap books, and learned that it is the oldest still-floating passenger ship out there and something or other about the Titanic, but I tend to think anything mentioned in the same sentence as the Titanic, and especially anything having to do with a big old ship, is not a very reassuring thing, especially after hearing in church last week from the ship’s captain about how they almost didn’t make it to Sihanoukville. But thank God for the ministry made possible by this visit. Cambodian officials welcomed them and extended an open invitation to return, so that is a pretty cool thing.

There was also the boat trip I’d organized. We spent most of Tuesday in five wooden boats, visiting three islands, getting sunburned, snorkeling through schools of black-and-yellow-striped fish with coral reef and urchins below, gashing my foot on said coral reef and later bandaging it with a fun green decorative band-aid, eating BBQ barracuda, squid, and prawns, swimming, throwing things, and shooting the breeze. There were games and activities for the kids throughout the week, led by some of the folks from Second Presbyterian of Memphis while the adults had their meetings, led by the other (and more serious) half of the 2PC team.

There was time at the beach and a chance to play volleyball and to somehow be chosen as the team captain for the losing team, thus leading a group of teens and juvenile delinquents from both teams to gang up on me and collectively throw me into the pool. Fortunately these little rascals are not as sneaky when concocting a sinister scheme as are older folks like you and I, so I overheard their plan in enough time to hand my cell phone, my glasses, and my money to Sina even as the rest of them whispered in Khmer or Dutch to one another the very ruthless way they planned to treat me. I was planning on swimming anyway, so it all worked out, really. While in the pool I was a monster and the little ones, ages six and under, found it endlessly entertaining to risk getting close to me and then, if caught, to be picked up, spun around and sent plummeting into the water, all the while they are screaming and laughing. They were screaming, of course, because of the false sense of danger, similar to what you and I experience on a roller coaster. The laughing part came in to play because I happened to be a good monster that didn’t let their heads go underwater, so as to prevent any drownings.

The van Opstal girls have these matching orange shirts, and I told them it is great they all wear them as a tribute to me, even if they spelled the name wrong. They try to tell me the shirts are from this country called Holland where their mom is from. Sarah (pictured above) thought my last name was Hung Loi, which sounds very Asian and not very Norwegian.